You can get there through either organised tours (often available through your hotel), taxi, or private tour. If you go by taxi, be careful not to get ripped off.

I took a private tour, which cost 900RMB for three of us. The driver spoke fantastic English, great for asking all those questions about the area and culture.

The best thing when you get there is to take the cable car up, walk 1.5 to 2km to the right, and either take the chair lift or toboggan run down. If you go up on the cable car, you can go left, but once you've seen 2km of the wall, you've seen it all.

You can climb up the steps, but it's hard work--trust me, I did it, as the cable car was closed for winter maintenance when I was there. It must have been 3,000 to 5,000 steps to get there, and more when you're at the top.

Word of warning: all the stalls at the bottom offer lots of gifts and food for $1; however, they cost more than $1--it's just a way for them to get you to their stall.

The Mutinayu Great Wall is located in Huairou, 70 km northeast of Beijing. The trip took over an hour through a combination of depressed and somewhat developed suburbs of Beijing. We were surprised to see billboards advertising single homes with two-car garages very similar to the ones found in the US next to advertising for public baths with hot water showers scribbled on cardboards. The cab dropped us at a parking lot on the bottom of the mountains. We hiked up a very steep walk lined with stalls selling anything from clothes to quilts to souvenirs. It was a very cold and windy December afternoon and we were the only tourists there. Every time we slowed down to catch our breath, the vendors rushed out to drag us to their stalls "I remember you from last time", "What is your name", "I have something very beautiful for your wife", etc.. We bought separate tickets to enter the park and ride the cable cars.

Opened to tourists since 1988, Mutianyu is noted for its precipitousness and steepness. Undulating slopes and overlapping peaks wind up tops of mountains before dipping downhill. Looking into the distance from this section of the Great Wall, one just gets the impression of an enormous dragon soaring over the sky.

Mutianyu has the largest construction scale and best quality among all sections of the Great Wall. To meet the requirement of strategic defence, Mutinanyu, which is 1,400 miles long, stretches in 3 directions with watch towers in commanding positions. Built mainly with granite, the wall is 25 ft high and the top is 15 ft wide.

It is amazing to think that this imposing structure was built since the mid 6th century, a huge project by a workforce of nearly a million men over difficult terrain and without any machinery. It is sad to hear about the tragic stories of all the hardship and cruel treatment that had brought death to many of the laborers.

The cable car took us through dense vegetation down the mountain. My friend made the mistake of answering one of the vendors and before long, we found ourselves walking to our cab ladden with purchases of quilts, clothes, souvenirs, "Certificate" that we climbed the Great Wall bounded in very Chinese-looking red silk book, all at the vendors "best price". We were glad we did it in the name of Free Enterprise !